


Enough

by hopeintheashes



Series: Maps [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Illness, M/M, Sick!Reid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 19:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19324687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeintheashes/pseuds/hopeintheashes
Summary: The epilogue/finale toMapsandThey Don't Love You Like I Love You.The truth comes out, in the end.Set sometime betweenMapsand the middle of season 14.





	Enough

. . .  
. . .

The clock drags, and he shakes, unsteady on his feet. The students in the front row are looking at him with concern, or maybe fear of contamination. He clears his throat again (again, again) and finishes his thought. Ends early. The class rushes to the door.

He's slow to clean up. Quicksand in his body and his brain. Derek must've been a shadow silhouetted in the doorway to the hall, but Spencer didn't see, and now he's suddenly, shockingly, terrifyingly close.

"Morgan." All he can manage.

Derek grins, an easy smile, but his eyes are worried. "Hey, kid."

 _Not a kid,_ he wants to protest, but it would be pure habit. Morgan's nicknames have a way of working themselves deep in your very sense of self. Like you don't know who you are when he's not around.  _He's not around._ He blinks, and blinks again. "What are you... doing here?"

"JJ texted me. Said they were leaving for a case, but you were teaching. That you were sick. Thought maybe I should check in."

"I'm—"  _Delirious, apparently._  "I'm fine."

"Okay." Agreeable. Placating. Derek takes his bag. Starts packing up his notes. Spencer reaches for the papers, vaguely, then gives in. Derek shoulders the bag and looks around. "Where's your office?"

"Out... there." He gestures like that will help. His mind is five steps behind.

"Yeah?"

"142A."

"That, I can work with." Morgan turns and starts to leave. The only thing to do is follow him out of the dark lecture hall and down the corridor, squinting in the bright hallway light.

His office is tiny and shared with another adjunct who likes to talk at him when Spencer's trying to work. He avoids the room as much as possible, but right now it's the location of his coat and his laptop and his mug of long-cold coffee and  _not_  the location of Richard, who's at a conference in Cleveland, so the mental calculations work out. He realizes that Morgan's trying to hand him his coat. He doesn't take it.

"What are you doing here?"

Derek's brow furrows like he's not sure if Spencer realizes he's asked that before. He's acutely aware that he has. The answer just doesn't make sense.

"Like I said, JJ called—"

"No, but—" He swallows and his throat flares. His head aches, aches, aches. He's not sure he can stand anymore. "But what the fuck, Derek." Half-whispered, like in a dream.

It's all wrong, he knows it is but can't say why, and Morgan's coming for him, bag sliding to the ground, hand on his elbow, guiding him down. His office chair is off-kilter at the best of times, a castoff hand-me-down, and he's going to fall off the edge of the world. He lands. Strong hands. Forehead pressed into Morgan's hip. He tries to say something else, and fails, and coughs, and coughs, and coughs.

Morgan is working his fingers into his hair, finding the fever underneath. He's underwater in the dimness of the windowless room. Door closed. Locked? No.  _Please._

"Okay, pretty boy." From far away. "Let me take you home."

. . .

There's a secret that Garcia told him once. She'd covered her mouth in shock as soon as the words came out, because the story wasn't hers to tell. Hadn't been her place to knock his universe off its axis. He'd stumbled backward out of the neon darkness of Garcia's office with her voice following him, breaking:  _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry._  He'd thought about throwing up, about collapsing to the hard tile of the men's room floor. He'd drenched his face in cold water instead. Set his jaw. Ignored JJ's concern. Made it through the rest of the day. Went home, head spinning, and sobbed.

. . .

They're back at his house and he's back in time, after the hospital,  _aphasia in the ambulance,_  years and years ago: Derek moving through his house like a benevolent ghost, appearing at his bedside and disappearing into the mist.

He blinks, and he's standing in the kitchen. Derek's trying to get him to sit down. He just bites his lip. His thoughts are running full tilt through a forest that's thick with fog, not quite avoiding the trees. There's a question he has to ask, but none of the permutations sound right. "Why—" He stops. Starts again. Lets the words spill out. "You had your chance. All that time. Why didn't you ever— make a move?" The slang feels strange in his mouth, like rocks rolling over and over into smoothness where the waves break against the shore. Salt and sand he can't spit out, rough against his tongue.

"What?" Shock, but not surprise.

"You shouldn't trust Garcia with your secrets." There's an edge to his voice that sounds foreign, that sounds like prison, like fear forged into weaponry. Silence, silence, silence. Morgan's face works through emotions; Spencer can read them in the microexpressions that even Derek can't quite tame. "So— why?"

“I... don’t date co-workers.”  _Lie._ Or— the truth, but not the whole truth. So help you God.

"Okay." Barely phonated. He's suddenly shaking hard.

"Reid—"

There's emotion swelling in his chest, stealing his oxygen. He pulls in a breath. Tight and insufficient. It feels like panic. He tries again. Gasps. Starts coughing and can't stop, and then he's being wrapped in Derek's arms. He wants to tell him that the tears are a physiological reaction to the spasms in his lungs.  _Lie._  He regains his breath after a while, but Derek still holds on. Quiet, quiet, quiet. Then—

"It doesn't mean I didn't love you." Turns out the resonant frequency of his heart is Derek's voice when he lets his walls come down. "That I don't love you. It's just—"

Déjà vu. A hotel room with JJ, a million years ago.  _"Asymmetry,"_  he whispers, completing the scene. "Our timing was always off."

Derek's breath catches, and it means the answer is  _yes,_ and his mouth floods with helpless anger for everything that could've been.

"And now it's... never."  _You have a kid, a real kid, the most beautiful kid I've ever seen. And a wife. And a house. You have all that, but you could've had me._  Bitter in a way that turns his stomach. Makes him feel damned.

Derek shakes his head. "It's..."  _It's._ "I don't have a good answer for you, Spence. I just need you to know that the hesitation? Was all me. And then..." He shrugs. "Yeah. Timing. And here we are."

"What do you want?" It hurts to ask the question, but the answer is swift.

"I want you in my life. If that's what you want. I love you, and I want you there." A split second pause, Derek searching for words, voice shaking, just a little, when he says, "You're godfather to my son."

Godfather, and namesake, but not—

 _Not._ There's so much that he's not. Spencer is suddenly, incomprehensibly exhausted. He has to go lie down. "Okay." It's a whisper.

"Okay." Derek reads him, and ends the conversation there, and walks him to his bedroom. "I can stay. I want to stay."

Spencer curls up under the blankets. Eyes closed. Finally, nods.

"Okay." Soft, strong, familiar. "I'll be here when you wake up."

. . .

He cries himself to sleep, and Derek pretends not to hear, or at the very least doesn't come in. He thinks about calling JJ. He thinks about alternative histories, and alternative presents. Thinks about the multiverse, and the impossibility of getting to where he wants to be. His vision blurs with fever and tears, and he tries to remember to breathe.

. . .

He surfaces again to a knock on the door, muffled through the pressure in his ears. Tries to respond, but no sound comes out. Derek opens the door anyway, slowly, giving him a chance to protest. He doesn't. He wouldn't. He can't.

There's a chair in the corner. Wooden. Caned seat. Derek pulls it up. "You know the drill." Gentle in a way so few others get to hear. Hands full, ready to soothe.

He shakes his head, but they've been here before, and yes, he does in fact know the drill. It makes him feel young, and small, and humiliated, and loved. Derek brushes his hair back, off his forehead and out of his eyes, and waits for Spencer to nod. He does, eyes closed, shuddering against the touch, and into it. Silicone on his forehead, over to his temple. Haptic feedback. He knows the screen is glowing orange. "102?" Whispered and hoarse.

"Point three." Derek's hand in his hair, again. He wants it, can't stand it, can't live without it. The tremors have taken hold. "Meds," Derek tells him. It's an order, low and steady, and he shakes his head, and complies.

He can't stay awake, and he can't fall asleep, and Derek is within arm's reach. He catches his hand. A breath, like Morgan's half-surprised, but he doesn't say anything, just holds on. Spencer shivers under the blankets and keeps that contact as an anchor. Eventually, Derek shifts in the chair. The caning creaks in protest. He starts to stand up, and Spencer tries to say  _no,_ but it's a wordless, breaking sound that makes Derek's voice catch when he whispers, "Shh, you're okay," like he means it, like it could be true. It can't be true. The world's ending, all the bolts shaking loose in the earthquake of heartache and fever, saltwater rivers drying in crystals on his cheeks.

Derek's thumbs are rough under his eyes, but his lips are soft on his forehead, and he's coming around the bed, fingertips dragging down his side, keeping contact, refusing to let himself be lost. The mattress sinks and Derek's breath is in close to his ear, "Can I—"

He's already nodding, and there's warmth and strength at his back, wrapping him up, holding him tight. He breathes, and they breathe, and the tremors start to subside, and that's something, at least. It's a start.

. . .  
. . .

 

 


End file.
